A very tasty dose of fudge

So it still exists then?

I’m referring to the sun which finally put in an appearance on Friday. It even felt positively spring like. I was hence quite motived to do some birding and decided to try and see a really stunning drake Ferruginous Duck which had been on a small lake in the middle of Wolverhampton for the past week.  By the way, Lonely Planet voted Wolverhampton the fifth worst city in the world. If you have never visited this says all you need to know!

Ferruginous ducks are the rarest diving duck in Europe with an estimated population of  just 13,000 pairs the majority of which are found in Hungary and Romania. It’s the same old story I’m afraid of habitat loss driving birds towards extinction.

Now I’ve mentioned before the problem with exotic quakers, i.e they have a very bad habit of doing a bunk from collections.  An added complication with Fudge ducks, as these guys are nicknamed for rather obvious reasons, is that there is a reintroduction program in northern Germany. These reintroduced birds have dispersed widely and some have found their way to the UK. Reports of the Wolverhampton bird however, no ring, signs of wing clipping etc., indicated a wild origin.

Fudge ducks fall into a well populated category on my UK bird list, yes sure I have seen them but only badly. The last one I saw, distantly of course, was a juvenile at Mimsmere RSPB a few years ago which was accepted as genuine wild bird. I did once consider grading my bird ticks according to the view from 1 (terrible) to 10 (brilliant). With further consideration I realised that this was going to be very depressing and counterproductive!

On arrival at west lake, smack bang in the middle of lovely Wolverhampton, it was immediately clear this bird was going to rate ten out of ten. The lake was comparatively small and the Fudge duck was associating with a flock of confiding tufted ducks who had obviously got use to the level of disturbance typical of a busy town park.

After two hours I’d had my fill and left for home with a plan to spend a sunny afternoon gardening. The lawn mower has just returned from a much overdue service so my first job was to give the lawns a first high cut of the year. The first lawn mowing always seems to transform the garden from its somewhat shambolic winter appearance into something resembling a well-kept cottage garden. I was then back in the greenhouse sowing broad beans. These are one of our favourite garden vegetables and have the added bonus that they freeze extremely well. Experience has taught me not to sow them directly into the ground in our garden as mice dig up and eat the beans. I hence sow them in root trainers first in the greenhouse before planting out after a month or so.

I popped into the north hide at pit 60 late afternoon for a third attempt to see the Garganey and finally succeed. The issue in seeing it is that it is favouring the flooded grass behind the distant reed bed and only occasionally comes out onto the main lake. This young bird has transformed itself from its rather drab brown juvenile attire into beautiful adult plumage, a true ugly duckling transformation!

I’m going to finish today on my one man mission, or some might say current hobby horse, to show the youth of today how good music was in the seventies. I also want to dispel the myth, sometimes called dad dancing, that my generation could not dance, or bop as we use to call it.

Check out the wonderful Thin Lizzy on top of the pops circa 1973 and some of the incredible dancing therein!